This week we are starting a new chapter that we have been planning for a few months: a disaggregation project with UK homes together with great local partners. We couldn’t be more excited about it.
So, why do we think the UK markets is going to be important to serve?
It turns out that the UK market has several characteristics that make it unique and highly suitable for our products. For starters, the UK market has the biggest problem with distrust in energy companies in Europe. UK consumers frequently name their energy bills as one of their biggest worries. Last election cycle in the UK Ed Milliband tried to play to this anger by suggesting freezing energy costs. Bringing consumers transparency regarding their energy costs and helping them save seems to make a lot of sense here.
Secondly, the UK roll-out of smart meters is starting in the next 12 months, and the legislation behind it calls for some quite unique requirements. Although the decision has taken longer to mature than in other markets, the way meters are rolled-out is more aggressive than what we’re seeing in other markets. On top of the smart meters themselves, consumers will have a so-called ‘Consumer Access Device’ or CAD for short. That could potentially mean a national 100koll-like project addressed at 26 million UK households. We want to be in every home in the world — the UK market can help us take a good step in that direction.
On the tech side, there are some issues we will be working on that are unique for the UK market.
- Unique UK appliances
Most appliances in the UK have power load signatures highly similar to the rest of Europe. There are however appliances that are much more common in the UK than in other parts of Europe. Those are for example:
· Electrical showers. Rather than using the hot water supply, many UK showers has an electrical heating element.
· Kettle use. We’ve actually seen from UK data that kettle use is way higher in UK homes than in other European countries. They really do drink a lot of tea!
· Small radiators
If you’ve lived in the UK you know that many houses have far from perfect insulation. It is far more common to use smaller heating elements to heat up rooms than we see in other northern European countries.
2. Consumer Access Device (CAD) opportunity
Over the next few months we are deep-diving into the data to determine how to best use CADs to deliver disaggregation services to consumers.
3. Gas
The UK has the world’s biggest gas grid and most heating there is derived from gas. We will do work to disaggregate gas data to deliver a full energy breakdown for the UK market.
As you can see, there are many reasons for us to be excited about our UK projects.
If you are living in the UK and you are interested in taking part, please email us here and we will get in touch! If you are interested in hearing more about the project, please write to me here.
Keep calm and look out for more news regarding the UK market shortly!
